The original Zune met with a lot of resistance from the market, its one unique feature of being able to share your music with other Zune users was not terribly well received. The second incarnation has found a crowd of followers, the new HD version of the Zune provides great quality. As well the design has changed, slimming down what was a rather chunky MP3 player. If you haven't acquainted yourself with the new Zune, drop by ExtremeMhz to see it in action.

Heat may finally prove useful in computing applications, a big turn around considering it has been the archenemy of designers and builders until this research came to light. A one way thermal diode takes waste heat on a one way trip away from the heat source, a great boon to heatsink makers everywhere. That is not the most impressive application, follow the link from Engadget and you will learn about the possible applications of this new technology, such as thermal

Google is launching its own ebook service called Google Editions in what can only be a shot at Amazon's market share. The ebook behemoth is already watching its back for signs that Walmart is heading their way and now they have a different competitor shouldering their way in. Google says that their books will be readable on 'smartphones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops', a big difference from Amazon's Kindle. Expect to see a lot of the same legal wrangling that accompanied the creation of Google Books,

Graphics companies making supercomputers, CPU companies focusing on graphics, it is a mad market and one of the more popular areas to branch into is input devices. The latest company would be Revoltec as they bring you the FightMouse Pro. 3600 DPI, 1ms response time, six buttons, modifiable weight and enough memory to keep track of a few profiles help place it in the high end of gaming mice. TestSeek Labs was also very happy with its flexibility

Click over to AnandTech and take a very close look at the first picture in this article. You might not notice the one pad on the first picture until you look at the second one where the damage is much more obvious. Through extreme overclocking, headed towards the 5GHz mark and over, they have damaged several boards and processors. You probably won't see this on air cooling as the power draw required for those kind of overclocks tends to involve liquids that are more usually gases. It is worth

Aion The Tower of Infinity is a new MMORPG with a few interesting twists, the most noticeable is that just about everyone is a flying supermodel. The graphics are impressive for an online game and Aion takes advantage of that when you create the face of your character. They do not skimp on the scenery and atmosphere either, all of which are much more detailed and interesting than others in this genre. The levelling system allows you to avoid grinding, crafting will also help you gain experience to help you reach level 25, when you sprout wings and can start PvP play.

It is very important not to lose your sense of play as you work and somehow the tech community has no problems doing so, as evidenced by the amount of easter eggs that have accompanied our hardware and software. Software easter eggs are most often found in games, but there have been a few office applications that either have them in obvious spots or hidden away in the code. Hack a Day wants to gather all of the best hardware hacks, messages on tracings on PCBs or inside cases, but somewhere you wouldn't notice unless you were actually working with the hardware.

Abandoning the river theme, AMD seems to be looking to the stars to see its future platforms, Dragon being replaced with Leo next year and Scorpius to follow in 2011. Scorpius will feature a 32nm Zambezi CPU
sporting four cores at the very least, along with an integrated DDR3 controller and fit into a Revision 2 AM3 socket, just to make CPU sockets even more confusing. SemiAccurate also touches on their plans for an Accelerated Processor Unit which brings a GPU on board.

The same discrepancies that apply to software benchmarking programs also apply to predictions of hardware failure rates based on subjecting them to extreme stress conditions. Much like a graphics card, the only way to know how it will perform is to actually use it in real life conditions for hours, days or years. Such is the case with DRAM errors, as proven by a study done by Google. Instead of the current estimate based on synthetic testing, as Ars Technica puts it, '

The original Operation Flashpoint was a hard game and not because of monster closets or ridiculous boss fights, it was hard because bullets kill. One good shot could take you out or is at least guaranteed to slow you down. There is no health metre nor any med kits lying around, you have to finish the mission with every bump, scrape and bullet hole that you accumulate over the mission. The sequel, Dragon Rising looks to be every bit as daunting, and every bit as fun.

RAMBUS, one of the last attempts at serial volatile memory
standards didn't do well when it was first tried on the market; a long story that by the end had many glad to see RAMBUS go. DDR and its successive generations has had success in the PC world, but that is a small share of the total memory market. A PC can provide the cooling and power that defines DDR. Now The Inquirer reports on the return of serial memory, this time targeted specifically towards m

Physics is fun in games, be it chopping down trees with heavy fire in Crysis or FarCry2 or the joy of levelling entire buildings in Silent Storm to deny your enemies cover. What isn't fun is slapping down $100+ for a PPU to find out that there are a total of 2 maps that support that particular physics engine or that the sum effect of having that PPU is that paper and dust react to wind in a slightly more interesting way than without the $100+ PPU. nVIDIA wanted to make the PPU more approachable, to do so they let you slap in any of their recent cards into a second PCIe slot and you

Today GF has released news of a partnership that it has developed with well known CPU designer ARM (Advanced RISC Machines). While ARM itself does not actually produce their CPUs for end users, they do license out their designs to anyone and nearly everyone in the industry. One of the latest ARM enabled designs is NVIDIA's Tegra, which features the ARM 11 processor. While not the most cutting edge ARM design, it has allowed NVIDIA to successfully enter the smartphone and MID market with a pretty robust product with excellent features. So far the biggest application of t

For $100 you can pick up a great set of headphones with surround sound and possible even noise cancellation technology, but some like their audio to fill the room, not just their heads. Logitech has an answer, the 2.1 Logitech Z523
speaker system. They are not really audiophile quality but for those who play games or stream music via their PC will be quite satisfied with the quality.